With a deep-rooted history of four generations spanning more than 70 years residing, attending schools, owning homes and businesses in the city of Whittier, we are up in arms concerning the proposed drilling of our hills.

We have been supporters of “saving our hills” since the beginning. The beauty and rarity of undeveloped land in the Los Angeles area is one of the reasons we remain here.

Kudos to Robert Henderson for leading the city staff and council into thinking he was behind the protection of our hills. There seems to be a fox in the hen house.

We trusted our City Council and city staff in the early 1990s to present a logical way to preserve our hills. Since Councilman Henderson has been the leader of this preservation scheme and now will not be able to fund the upkeep of the hills due to the imminent closure of the Puente Hills Landfill, we believe he is attempting to devise a plot to sell out our protected land to make him personally look like a hero at our (citizens of Whittier) expense.

We are against the reopening of our hills for oil drilling. Our hills should be saved for future generations in Whittier and surrounding areas. We should be not be going backward, we should be thinking green for the future.

Drilling for oil is a very dangerous and toxic business. We both were in the oil business in the 1970s and `80s working with Alaska pipelines, Saudi Arabia oil fields and offshore drilling in the Bay of Trinidad. We can tell you firsthand of the dangers associated with oil drilling and pipelines.

You are proposing having oil tanker trucks traveling Penn Street. This is absolutely not acceptable. Residents and property owners have purchased their homes as an investment in their future. It looks as if you are planning to destroy the future of Whittier’s families just for the almighty dollar.

We have invested more than 30 years in our home and will not allow a few greedy, naive people to destroy our dreams.

If the state of California and county of Los Angeles somehow are coerced into allowing this drilling to happen, our city should not even consider Penn Street to be used by oil tankers. Penn Street is a very heavily populated residential street. There are many children, Whittier College students and families that would be negatively impacted, not to mention residents visiting Penn Park and Whittier College sports complex.

The DEIR is flawed in many ways; the traffic, air and noise pollution have not been addressed in a thorough study. A couple of hours of observation is not nearly enough to have a complete study.

The immensity of health impacts should be a concern to citizens and wildlife not only in the city of Whittier but for miles surrounding the site. Our quality of life, protection of our hills and home investment should be our City Council’s primary obligations. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Please re-think this ill-conceived, flawed and hazardous proposal.

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